Diary
Philly Knows Freedom is Timeless

Humans are compelled to reach back into our past to remember the shared moments that define us. In the spirit of what the Akan peoples of Ghana call ‘Sankofa,’ we reach back with the hope of unearthing lessons learned that will ground us in the present and guide our steps forward into the future. One thing the last year has taught the world is that truth is not just relative, it is subjective. When one person’s facts can be another person’s fiction, hindsight and history often fail to offer the clarity of vision we seek.

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Monument Lab, OverTime, Augmented Reality App, 2021. (Lori Waselchuk/ Monument Lab)

Monument Lab’s new augmented reality app OverTime is a "public art and technology platform designed to allow users to dig deeper into the people, places, and stories that compose a city." These vital elements of Philly’s place-based history are intentionally left open and interactive, alive with the purpose of public engagement, collective input, and revision. OverTime does not rely on the indelible, untested words of one-sided history books or the fallible memories and false accounts of a few privileged colonizers. The diverse people, places, and stories of OverTime not only define a more inclusive view of Philly’s past, but also shape and inform the city’s present and possible tomorrows—for the people, by the people.

Philly-based poet ursula rucker is OverTime’s oracle avatar, the people’s guardian that guides the viewer through this living historical archive. When you experience the app, ursula magically appears as the storyteller of this immersive journey through Philly-based events, maps, landmarks, and monuments. OverTime app users can engage with the timeline and contribute to this history-in-the-making with their own memories and sites of significance. Residents and tourists alike are given the opportunity to construct a layered landscape of the city through their own mind’s eye.

 

There is Power in Place

Though ursula is the narrator of the OverTime experience, you, the app user, are your own guide on this tour that begins at the iconic steps leading up to Philly’s Art Museum. So much history has happened on these steps, the place that Monument Lab's director Paul Farber calls “the city’s greatest pedestal”, from the Million Woman March to Rocky Balboa’s memorable, but fictional ascension. But what about what lies beneath it? What history can be told about the land the museum was built upon?

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Steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021. (Lori Waselchuk/ Monument Lab)

In his popular self-pubished booksFree Your Mound and Your Mind Will Follow and Great Mystery Philadelphia, local independent scholar and artist Ras Ben shares a wealth of knowledge about these grounds that speaks to the hidden power within them. His work honors the legacy of the land’s original peoples, the Lenni-Lenape, and offers an alternative reading of Philly’s monuments, their hidden historic narratives and symbolic meanings. Ras Ben’s work also speaks to the art and science of geomancy as it relates to urban design and the global phenomenon of mound-building that dates back millennia to the Olmec civilization through to post-flood indigenous cultures. Mounds are sacred earthen structures often built along magnetic fields or in alignment with celestial constellations. According to Ras Ben’s research, the Philadelphia Art Museum and its surrounding monuments were built on one of many mounds that traverse the globe, charging the institution and other locales along this magnetic grid with powerful planetary energy. If I were to add a few chosen footnotes to the OverTime's history surrounding the Art Museum and other monuments across the city, many would come from the pages of Ras Ben’s illuminating books on these subjects.

 

Freedom is Timeless

Time is a construct. It is an intangible force that binds memory into moments that become compressed, managed, and ultimately confined by the very reality it creates. Modern humans have become trained keepers of time at the cost of our own existential freedom.  But, also, we must remember, time is art. The countless synchronicities and the cyclical flow of time can also be seen as a work of art—a triptych that connects and contains the Past, Present and Future as one.

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Monument Lab, OverTime, Augmented Reality App, 2021. (Monument Lab)

ursula spoke to me about finding beauty in the intentional act of “time release”–what she calls the art of pacing oneself. As a multi-hyphenated talent simultaneously engaged in myriad productions and creative processes, ursula has mastered the art of her own time management. She follows a spiritual ethos that is guided by freedom of speech and the controlled flux of revealing her completed creations to the world with strategic intention—not just project by project, but sometimes verse by poetic verse, moment by unpredictable moment. The ability to control one’s own time and movement through space is a daily praxis of freedom. The reclamation of Philly’s time, place, and history through the memories and future visions of its people is an essential goal of the OverTime app.  

 

History can be Myth 

OverTime is designed to take users on a mission of discovery and reclamation that feels both familiar and otherworldly. Poets have a way with words that illuminate the mythic dimension of reality. In the mythic dimension, time and space are free of secular limitations and can bend and fold to create unexpected meaning. Through OverTime, Monument Lab recognizes that this mythic dimension applies to aspects of history, too.

Farber saw ursula as the “voice of the soul of the city” that could get us to see and think about history non-linearly, inclusively, and mythically. This is the kind of shift in perspective that can free us from the fate of repeating the dark parts of our past that do not serve our most promising futures. The collective remembering of place-based history that informs and energizes the cities and lands we call home is the beating heart at the core of Monument Lab’s local and national work. But it’s through artists like ursula and everyday people that the OverTime app comes to life with a purpose.

 

The Future is Now

In the face of daily pressures and temporal constraints, ursula uses her voice and the platforms of art, music, and social media to unapologetically speak her truth. These are also tools she uses to reclaim precious time and personal power. When I asked ursula how she navigates through the constant whirlwind that is life in the 21st century, she responded that she "trust[s] the rhythm and flow of her own natural current. The future is NOW." On the cosmic stage of Time, ursula believes history needs to “get over itself,” and I wholeheartedly agree with her. It is well overdue and over time that the Past finally steps aside to make space for the Future to shine, now. 

time waits for no one; use it wisely, not wastefully.

live not dangerously or aimlessly, for if you do you will disgrace your chi,

living your life with distaste in the guise of being carefree;

in the name of being free.

—ursula rucker, "Keep Falling," Jazzanova (2002) 

 

Li Sumpter, PhD

Li Sumpter is an independent scholar and multidisciplinary artist who applies strategies of worldbuilding and mythic design toward building better, more resilient communities of the future. Li’s creative research and collaborative design initiatives engage the art of survival and sustainability through diverse ecologies and immersive stories of change. Her artistic practice addresses threats to mind, body, and spirit with a focus on the readiness and resilience of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. Li is a cultural producer and eco-arts activist working through MythMedia Studios, the Escape Artist Initiative and various arts and community-based orgs in her home town of Philly and across the country.

www.lisumpter.com
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